In Defense of Star Trek V and William "Ego" Shatner

Having watched Star Trek V for the first time in 15 years, I was struck by the fact that there are a lot of fairly good scenes for the "second stringers" - those actors who have accused Shatner of being an out-of-control egomaniac who would steal their lines with impunity. You have Uhura piloting a shuttle craft and performing a fan dance, Scott engineering a jail break and dancing around Uhura's advances, Chekov serving as Captain of the Enterprise, etc. And you could even argument that DeForest Kelley (not a secondary actor) got some of the best scenes in the entire movie. I know, in the past, that many people have argued that humor in these scenes occurred at the expense of the characters, but that's a different argument. What I'm suggesting is that the man accused of hogging all the screen time did give the secondary characters some fun scenes. Agree or disagree?

 

I breezed through the Trek-related chapters of Walter Koenig's autobiography yesterday, and he sure seems to disagree, suggesting that Shatner wanted the film to be about the big three from the get-go and that he (Koenig) worked very little in comparison to the other films.

It does have *some* nice moments for the supporting cast, but it also has some awful moments for them, and for the most part it has moments that just don't include them at all.

 

I think Koenig's letting his personal dislike of Shatner cloud his perceptions on this. I don't think he got significantly less to do in TFF, and Nichols and Takei almost certainly got more to do here than they did in TWOK or TSFS.

 

One could argue that they were just continuing the successful cast ensemble approach of Star Trek III and IV. In III, the only one who really doesn't get much time is Uhura; the rest are quite prominent throughout the movie.

 

May I suggest that you watch the review of sfDeris on ST 5, and then decide if Shatner kept his ego in perspective or not. His argument is quite convincing, what is his argument...you'll need to watch to see..

http://blip.tv/sf-debris-opinionated-reviews/star-trek-v-the-final-frontier-review-intro-5419029

Enjoy.

The
S H A T I N A T O R

 

I'm not sure Uhura's fan dance is something to be proud of. It's a rather absurd moment, and Nichols was upset when she found out that they didn't even use her singing voice. She was dubbed over with a different singer's voice.

Scotty's engineering break is immediately followed by that ridiculous scene where he knocks himself out. Sure he can break a few guys out a brig, but the man apparently can't walk through the ship without seriously injuring himself enough to be sent to sickbay.

And it's hard to take Chekov seriously as a 'captain' when the man is portrayed as being dumb enough to think that blowing into a communicator will trick Uhura and the starship sensors into thinking there is a snowstorm.

Kelly does get some good moments, but he is a part of the Big Three.

The humor of the movie is supposed to be 'funny' because it shows supposedly competent and intelligent Starfleet officers as really being inept morons...all except for Kirk. Sulu and Chekov can't hike through a forest without getting lost, and then they try an obviously stupid ploy of a fake snowstorm. Scotty knows the Enterprise better then Kirk, but then walks into a beam hard enough to knock himself out...and that in and of itself is stupid because the average person would have to smash their head into the beam pretty damn hard to black out. It's like something you would see in a cartoon. Being clumsy is one thing, this is simply ridiculous.

And Uhura's naked fan dance. When you compare that to how she managed to subdue Mr. Adventure in VH, the naked fan dance seems a little insulting. They didn't even use her real singing voice, and Nichols is actually a decent singer, so I'm not quite sure why they decided to dub her over.

Add this to the fact that everyone, except for Spock and McCoy, eventually betrays Kirk to follow Sybok. The same people who were willing to risk their careers and lives for Kirk and Spock in SfS, suddenly are willing to turn on Kirk when the cosmic Dr. Phil shows them their pain. And Kirk is portrayed as the only person who can truly resist Sybok. Even Spock and McCoy are shown to have a bit of a struggle before siding with Kirk.

It's hard not to see this movie as an ego trip when Kirk is the only sane, rational and competent person in the movie. Even when he falls off the mountain it's really Spock's fault for distracting him with a ludicrous conversation about how Kirk shouldn't be distracted while climbing the mountain.

 

Koenig is specific in the book -- he worked less on TFF than he did in any of the previous movies. Just fifteen days, IIRC (I can't be sure -- I had to return the book to the library so I don't have it handy -- but I think that was the number).

 

I personally liked many of the moments for the minor characters in STV. What some of the secondary actors forget in hindsight is that they were SUPPOSED to be secondary actors. TOS was about Kirk, Spock, and Bones. The other actors were only there to support the three leads. Koenig's memoir written during The Motion Picture illustrates this clearly. The fact that the supporting cast (Takei and Nichols primarily based upon their autobioraphies) whine about this doesn't make it any less true.

 

To be clear, it's not really fair to say that Koenig whines about this in his book. He's very honest about his role, and who the star is. I haven't read Takei's book or much of Nichols' book yet, so I can't say about those books.

 

Yet again, what has always been known opinion on this board...IT IS HIS OPINION!!!! Like he said unless HE was William Shatner what does he know???? Oh I can tell you Dog shit!


EDIT: What a effing windbag...I couldn't get to PART ONE.

 

I'm familiar with this review and respect the opinions given as his opinions. And though I think he does make some valid points, I don't - in the end - agree with him.

I actually like the Final Frontier. It isn't good, but it doesn't suck my will to live the way Nemesis or The Voyage Home do. It actually has some excellent moments. It has some that make me cringe as well, but the good outweighs the bad IMHO.

 

that may be the case for working days, but I wonder if you compared screen-time minutes for the secondary characters if they would actually turn out different than other movies. I can't remember Nichols or Takei getting much of any screen time in TWOK for example and I think Takei complained about his time in that one.

 

I bet the screen time would be a little greater in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan simply because so much of it is spent on the bridge, where all seven regulars usually reside. Of course, this doesn't speak to how large or important their role might be. Sulu probably has the least screen time at all in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, but has his best role in six movies there. The same could be said for Nichelle Nichols in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. The "Mr. Adventure" scene is her moment to shine in the movie series, yet it falls in a movie where she has very little overall screen time.

 

I'm not a fan of the 5th film but I do think some of the critiscm it gets is unfair. The comedy stuff isn't any more demeaning to the characters than much of what's in the preceding film (such as Chekov getting lost in the woods vs. seemingly genuinely confused as to why the FBI agents won't believe he's a space man from THE FUTURE. The later is good silly fun but it's not more respectful to him which seems to be the main complaint).

Plus, most of them get a cool little moment of awesome. Chekov's faux Captaincy, Sulu's dare devil piloting, Scotty's jail break (and strangely uncommented on ability to be the only member of the crew seemingly completely immune to Sybok's brainwashing by tannoy. Hell, even McCoy and Spock were tempted and Kirk never let him have the chance. All that Whisky must have severely rewired Scotty's brain).

The only one to really come off badly is Uhura, who doesn't get anything but daft gags. Though I must admit, I find the bit where the sex starved men run up the hill to the sexy naked siren only to find a pensioner to be really, really funny for some reason. But I can understand why she's be pissed at it (and her voice not being used for the song).

Though it is telling that when it looks as if Scotty's going to team up with the big three and get a lions share of the action as part of the resistance he instead wanders off and knocks himself out.

 

Actually, even that's not strictly true. Uhura actually gets to be a part of a landing party or once, which is fairly rare; we get to see her pilot a shuttlecraft; and we get to see her manning the navigation and sensor systems on the way back while Sulu is doing his daredevil piloting. At the very least, she got more to do than "hailing frequencies open."

 

I'd always been under the impression that he simply wasn't exposed to it, having been working in the deep bowels of the ship throughout nearly the entire movie. The explanation is a little thin, sure, but nearly every time we see Scotty, he's fixing something. And with "less than a skeleton crew aboard," bizarre as it might seem, it makes a certain sense that he's just too busy to be brainwashed.

 

^ I find it hard to believe that Sybok was intent upon hijacking the ship and taking it to Sha Ka Rhee -- so intent that he managed to brainwash all of the senior staff and put Kirk, Spock, and McCoy in the brig -- but he just never got around to the chief engineer and third in command who could easily derail his entire plan.

 

Who did derail his plan in large part. I mean that jailbreak certainly wasn't in Sybok's playbook. Sure he caught the fugitives a few minutes later but still Scotty was the fly in Sybok's ointment and the pain in his ass. If he hadn't knocked himself silly with a bulkhead Scotty could very well have shut Sybok's plan down by sabotaging the Enterprise's engines and/or activating her internal defenses ala Space Seed.

 

Even if he is, theres something to be said for the fact that around half the original cast had a 'personal dislike' of Shatner for some very similar reasons.

Like Spock says: "The needs of the many... outweigh..." Not that Shatner saw it that way.

 

Good point actually, I guess the nude dancing blocked everything else out.

I think the odd way Sybok's seeming take over of the entire crew works is one of the films main weak areas, does he share all their pain over the PA system or do they all really hate Kirk so much they're keen to jump on the mutiny wagon? Even when I first saw the film around 1990 that seemed daft.

I know it wasn't the intent as they didn't want Sybok to be out and out evil, but I just generally decide he's just got insanely powerful mind control skills rather than actually bringing people round to his side by helping with their screw ups. It's not perfectby any means, but at least means Kirk doesn't have a crew of treacherous emotional cripples.